News

Victory in battle against scam trademark invoices

On 20 December 2017, the appeal court in Stockholm handed down its judgment in the criminal case against 20 fraudsters who were involved in sending at least hundreds of scam trademark invoices. These scam invoices looked like they came from the official European trade mark office (EUIPO). The Court of Appeal accepted the evidence for completed gross fraud and convicted the scammers to prison sentences at the higher end of the scale for gross fraud in Sweden. This includes four years and eight months for the main suspect Stefan R. Lighter prison sentences were given to Uppsala students who had their bank account used for receiving for payments.

Since the scam invoices were only sent to non-Swedish addresses, gathering evidence for the Swedish prosecutor was quite a challenge.

EUIPO has played a major role in this collection of evidence in collaboration with trademark owners organization MARQUES (www.marques.org).

Ploum-partner Willem Leppink, also a member of the executive committee of MARQUES, was one of the two (expert) witnesses heard in this case in Stockholm by the Swedish court.

The judgment is an important step forward in the fight against scam invoices.